The story is based on real events that took place during the "Fossil Wars" between paleontologists Cope and Marsh in the 1800s. Here's an exhibit in the Dinopolis Centre "Mar Nummus" in Albarracín, Spain, that mentions these events, too.

Once in the filmmaking mindset, and having written teleplays before, Michael Crichton also went for writing screenplays, beginning with Extreme Close-up (1973), also known as Sex Through a Window, and one of his most famous screenplays, Westworld (1973), which he directed himself and beacame a classic, currently rebooted into a TV series. In 1978 two further screenplays were made into films by himself, with Coma, based on Robin Cook's novel, and The First Great Train Robbery, which is the only one which he wrote, directed and was based on one of his own novels. Later he again directed his own screenplays for Looker (1981) and Runaway (1984). In 1996 he co-wrote the screenplay for Twister.

Trivia: Exteme Close-up (1973) and Twister (1996), the first and last screenplays he wrote, are also the only ones he did not direct himself.

Probably encouraged by the interest im the film rights of some of his novels (The Adromeda Strain (1971), The Carey Treatment (1972) and Dealing... (1972)), Michael Crichton had a go at directing in the 70s and 80s, beginning with Pursuit (1972), adaptation of his own novel Binary (written as John Lange, and credited as such). Then he directed his own screenplays for Westworld (1973), the adaptation of Robin Cook's novel Coma (1978), The First Great Train Robbery (1978), Looker (1981) and Runaway (1984). He stopped directing after Physical Evidence (1989) did not harness much success, and concentrated in his successful fiction writing career.Trivia: Pursuit (1972) and Physical Evidence (1989), the first and last movies he directed, were also the only ones not based on his own screenplays.

The series Insightran from 1960 to 1984, produced by Paulist Productions and led by a Roman Catholic priest of the order of the Paulist Fathers.

It would feature topics related to the search of meaning and Christian values. Michael Crichton directed three chapters.
This was a period in Michael Crichton's life when he tried different genres, like historical novels or these rather atypical productions, before returning to science-themed works.

In his non-fiction writing Michael Crichton continued on the topic of relationships but gradually shifted back to
science related topics, for which he
became better known, with pieces in various scientific journals and popular science magazines.

In the early 1980s Micheal Crichton expressed his views and concerns about computing and programming in contributions and interviews to magazines like Creative Computing and Compute!. At this time he was creating a computer game and writing extensively about this both fiction and non-fiction (see below).

These 18 novels are the core of Michael Crichton´s collected works. He is mostly known for these novels and the movie adpatations of some of them. In his lifetime, 15 novels were published under his own name. Two further ones were published posthumously, the last one finished by Richard Preston on the basis of the uncompleted manuscript Michael Crichton was working on when he passed away.

Between 1966 and 1972 Michael Crichton wrote ten novels under various pseudonyms. Three of them would be made into movies by1972, after he had hit success in the film industry with the adaptation of The Andromeda Strain, which he had written in 1969 under his own name.

In the early 1980s Micheal Crichton developed and followed a strong interest in the emerging field of computing and programming. During his time he explored it as a new way to tell stories through computer games, and also reflected on it in a deeper sense, expressing his views and concerns about it in articles and interviews as well as through his storytelling, as in the short story Mousetrap, published in TIME. He even published the programming code from the story in the magazine Compute!, thus reinforcing that his fiction writing is deeply rooted in real science and technology.

It is interesting that his views included considering the programming of computers and artificial intelligence as part and parcel of human evolution, and idea fully developed later by many authors like the Wachowski Brothers in The Matrix (1999) and its sequels. Movies like Ridleys Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and Michael Crichton's own "Runaway" (1984) could be considered the first steps in this direction.